


Alms in Autumn

by aud_k



Category: Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27662189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aud_k/pseuds/aud_k
Summary: In which a fairy reluctantly dons the mantle of “prey,” a golden-haired prince leads a ritual hunt, and a November dawn chases away more than just the night’s shadows.  There are many ways to die, and some of them, William discovers, are smaller—and luckier—than others.[Medieval fairy tale AU]
Relationships: Teddy Altman/Billy Kaplan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61





	Alms in Autumn

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

What his brother and mother hadn’t told him—and _damn their eyes_ , how had they never mentioned it?—was that it would feel like he was about to die. If he did not run fast enough, the dogs would catch him and they would rip him apart. It didn’t matter that the dogs, in this case, were mostly men, and that their hair was finely groomed into braids and beards, and that their speech was polished by the elegant accents of the noble courts. William had been chased before, and he knew when his pursuers meant to spill blood. These men were in it for the kill, or were, at least, too drunk to remember restraint and caution, which amounted, in effect, to the same thing. Their raucous guffaws and howls of laughter chased after him as he ran, beating fear into his heart and lungs.   
  
_William was going to die._

And for what? It wasn’t even supposed to be him here tonight. Thomas should have been the one running. Thomas was the one who loved this sort of thing, loved the thrill of the chase and the glee of victory, loved leading idiot men on wild goose chases, back and forth through the trees until they were spluttering and cursing out of sheer frustration. Thomas was the one who’d been born a silver fox and who still to this day slipped into his fur coat at a moment’s notice, sometimes on accident but mostly on purpose, much to their grandfather’s exasperation.

By contrast, William had been born with a pink, round ears and fat baby fingers, and it was only his eyes that had given him away as Fay: His irises had been full moons rising in a starry night sky. “Destined, since you were born,” his mother had once told him in a tone of voice caught between fondness and bemusement, “to stare out at something far away. Be careful or your head will float right off of your shoulders up into the clouds, dear heart.”

Not that _her_ head was attached too firmly to her shoulders, either. There was no doubt from whom William had inherited his eyes, and the King had not been wrong to assign William as apprentice to his mother, the Court’s weaver. William spent his days at his mother’s feet, watching her work on her loom and learning the secrets of the art while she wove tapestries of dreams out of thin air. He spent his days kneeling, quiet and watchful, while Thomas ran wild in the forests, playing tricks on whatever poor soul he happened across. 

It should have been Thomas out running tonight, goddammit, not William.

But Thomas had disappeared last month, leaving William with only the memory of a wink and a grin, and when their grandfather had called the Court to session on the night before the Hunter’s Moon, everyone had turned to William when the question, “Who shall run?” had been asked, as if they’d all forgotten that, mirror images though they may be, William was not, in fact, his brother. “Nevertheless, you are his shadow and his duty becomes yours in his absence, just as yours would become his if you were to vanish yourself,” said their grandfather, his voice as deep as a tolling bell, pronouncing the final hour of the day like doom on the horizon. William had hated Thomas bitterly in that moment.

And he’d turned to his mother, a plea rising to his tongue, but she hadn’t been looking at him, instead was watching the constellation of Cassiopeia rise in the Northeast, her eyes unreadable under her ruby-studded veil. She hadn’t so much as glanced at him, and the words had died in his mouth. If the Lady of the Loom, his own mother, would not argue with the King, then there was no chance that William, alone, would succeed in swaying the verdict. 

He’d glowered as he accepted the torc collar from his grandfather, forcing the burn of his eyes to cool before it boiled into tears. Despite everything, he’d reminded himself, he was not a child any more; he could at least pretend to own maturity, even if he had power over nothing else.

“This is an _honor_ , William the Fay,” his grandfather had reminded him in an undertone too quiet for anyone else to hear, gripping the collar when William had tried to tug it away. William had refused to reply, refused to look up at the man who still, and always would, tower over him. The King was solid as granite, clothed in a cloak of steel and iron; he’d been known, on occasion, to move mountains when the location of their rises displeased him, paying no heed to the distress of the humans, animals, and birds below. William had no chance of swaying him, none whatsoever—but he could, at least, make his displeasure known. 

“These rituals are older than time itself,” the King had continued, “and they must be remembered and practiced if there is to be continued peace between the Kingdoms of Fairy and Men. Before they were Thomas’s duty, they were your uncle’s and your mother’s, and before them, your grandmother’s, and before hers, mine. These are duties we cannot refuse. Remember that you are a small piece in something much larger than yourself, Grandson.”

William’s ears had burned as he’d tugged on the collar, but still the King had refused to let go. Finally, William had looked up into the Fairy King’s iron-colored eyes, and he’d nodded one quick, brief nod; and his grandfather had released his grip on the torc. William knew better than to argue with the King, but when he’d turned away, he’d thought, secretly, bitterly, _The pact is already broken. It broke the moment Men began to build cathedrals, the moment they began to forget that the forests and oceans and mountains are cathedrals._ Throughout the night’s ceremonies, William had sat in front of the hearth’s flickering firelight, tracing the grooves of the collar with absent-minded fingers and hot eyes.

In the morning, when he’d clasped the torc collar shut around his throat and shrugged off his clothes, William had not felt honored. He’d felt only naked and trapped, and the feeling hadn’t lessened as the sun crested the horizon and dawn washed over his skin. The stretch of long shadows had pulled and pushed at his body, like water at high tide, and William had sunk into it with a reluctant sigh, letting his body transform under the command of the sun and stars. It should not be _him_ here today, leading the party of Men through their geis; this should have been Thomas’s duty. Thomas was the fox, and William—

When he needed to be, William was the stag, his antlers still small and velvetted. He’d flashed through the woods like a flicker of lightning, too nervous to bask in the pleasure of speed or the beauty of the forest on an October morning, gusts of chilly wind sending golden leaves flying through the air. When he’d stopped to paw the ground and nervously bite at some moss, he hadn’t tasted anything but the questions sitting on his tongue. When would it start? _When_? Now? —No. When? How?

The minutes had crept by, each noise making William throw his neck up in alarm, but it was only ever the rustle of leaves or the skitterings of a squirrel. He’d begun to wonder what he was waiting for, wandering the forest while the morning sun climbed higher in the sky, and then—

—Suddenly a horn sounded—the Men had spotted him—the dogs were released with a great excitement of baying—and William’s simmering nervousness burst into fear, hot and frantic in his veins. The Hunt had begun.

He ran.

(He heard the hot pant of the dogs and the flurry of their feet as they chased him.)

He ran.

(He heard the gallop of hooves and the calls of the hunters as they followed after the dogs.)

He ran.

(No matter what tricks he tried, _he couldn’t lose them_.)

He ran until his hooves began to crack and his legs burned; he ran until blood stained his white coat, scratches and gashes from the brush, which clawed at him like it wanted to catch him and kill him; he ran until all thought was driven from his mind, until he was no longer William the Fay, but truly the dumb stag whose shape he wore, a creature who knew only one thing, which was that he must escape at any and all cost.

In years previous, whenever Thomas had dragged himself home after the Wild Hunt, he had limped with exhaustion—but he had still, somehow, grinned a grin wide with sharp teeth when William had asked how it went. “The most fun I’ve had in ages,” he’d always drawled out before disappearing into the baths.

How? How did Thomas find pleasure in this? 

_William was going to die._

The shape, if not the size, of the fear was familiar: William felt the prickle of it on the back of his neck every time that he stepped through the Veil into the Kingdoms of Men, which was a rare event indeed these days. While Thomas rifled through the myriad lands with gleeful abandon, William preferred to watch them from the other side of his mother’s mirror, which hung before her loom in the palace. The sights were beautiful in a bittersweet sort of way, but whenever William stepped into them with his own body, the sudden weight of matter always stunned him. The Kingdoms of Men were both too solid and too evanescent for William. The trees lost their leaves as soon as they grew them; men died shortly after their birth; and the blooming of flowers could be missed if you blinked at the wrong moment. By contrast, when his mother wove a flower in her tapestry, it was meant to last until the end of eternity; there would be no withering and dying.

God, how _heavy_ everything was! God, how easily things broke! The Lands of Men were composed of a million small tragedies waiting to happen.

The minutes felt like days, and the hours felt like seconds. William was vaguely aware of the sun shifting overhead, of the drift from the bright white light of the noontide, to the golden glow of afternoon, to the pink flare of sunset, but the knowledge was a distant, clinical fact. The only fact that mattered was the one he felt in his body: William was _exhausted_. He could feel the strain on his bones and ligaments, pulling taut with each bound and leap; and he could feel the pound of his heart, which felt big enough and hot enough to rupture through his ribcage; and he could feel each particle of air rip through his lungs like a flash of fire. And always, the fear chased him, more cruel than the dogs that snapped at his haunches.

Because—William knew what men were capable of. He had not always lived in his grandfather’s Court; that was a privilege that had to be earned by a half-breed like him. When William was born, he’d been secreted out of his mother’s delirious arms into the Kingdoms of Men, onto the doorstep of a cleric, who lived in the shadow of a half-built cathedral; and it was there that he’d remained until his eighteenth birthday. When he left, he didn’t leave in order to find Fairy; he left in order to escape men. When he _did_ find Fairy, all of the previous eighteen years sluiced off of him like shed skin—except the fear. The fear remained, riddled too deeply into his heart to be soothed away. It followed him no matter what shape he took, boy or fairy or stag.

He stumbled, and a hound snapped at his leg, teeth grazing William’s hide with careful menace. William leapt to the left in order to escape and found himself bounding suddenly through birches and willows, and he thought— _oh no_ —but it was too late to turn back. He jumped once, twice—then was forced to a halt by a great splash of water breaking up around him. He stood still, his thin, shaking legs tangled in weeds that swayed in the current of the river. Before him he saw a wide stretch of roiling white water blocking him from the other side; behind him he heard the excited whimpers of the hounds and the approaching thunder of the horse’s hooves. 

The world was rapidly sinking into a purple dusk, and William was trapped and tired and hurt. He saw the full moon, glowing orange-red, rise over the black canopies of the tree, and as he watched it, he decided that he was _done_. He let his weak legs collapse under him. He leaned into the roots of an old willow that had dipped its thirsty toes into the river. His breath puffed out of his snout in white clouds of steam, and as each breath evaporated, he saw more and more of the hunters assemble before him, tall shadows on their steeds. Hooves drummed the ground, then halted into a stuttering quiet as they pulled up next to each other. One of the riders guffawed in triumph, a few sighed or coughed, and another called out, “La douce, mes amis, la douce!” to the hounds, whose pointing bodies were quivering with anticipation.

A ring of hunters around a trapped quarry: There was only one way for this to end. William shuddered in the water and wondered at the cruelty of his family. Why had no one warned him? How had Thomas managed to escape this fate year after year of running?

_He didn’t_ , whispered the willow, caressing a gentle root against his breast like a mother soothing a restless baby. The pain from his scrapes faded as the wounds melted away into the water. _That’s not the ritual. The men must have their sacrifice, and you must give it to them. They will gut you, roast you and eat you tonight, just as they do your brother each year._

A frisson of horror tore through William as, in his mind’s eye, he saw it: Thomas’s silver pelt pulled inside out, glistening red as it hung around the torc collar which currently sat around William’s own neck; and the grinning men, holding the fur up like a trophy.

The willow curled a tendril of a root around the torc and continued, _Don’t be afraid, little one. Tomorrow you will wake up as if from a bad dream, and all will be well._

Were William himself in this moment, with his own pink lips and dextrous tongue, he would have laughed or perhaps sobbed. All will be well? 

_Thomas_ , he wondered, _how do you do this every year?_ “With abandon,” he suddenly imagined Thomas saying with a cool tilt of his eyebrows. Then: “With love,” he imagined his mother sighing as she stared into the mirror that hung always before her. “With dignity,” he heard his grandfather tell him, as ancient as the earth itself.

Of fearlessness and love, he had little experience, but dignity … _If nothing else_ , William thought, _I can own my dignity._

He pushed himself up on his four unsteady legs and he lifted his antlers as high as he could. With slow, careful movements, he stepped onto the bank of the river, onto the soft grass that grew out of the damp earth like locks of beautiful unclipped hair. He looked at the men who sat high on their horses, and he waited for the end.

“Thank the saints,” he heard one of them exclaim, “the beast has come at bay!”

“About ruttin’ time, my bum feels like mincemeat after all this goddamned ridin’,” replied a barrel-shaped man, sweeping his arms out in a wide, angry gesture and almost falling off his horse in the process.

“Mincemeat! My god, I’m famished! I could use a steamin’ hot mincemeat pie myself right now—oh, one of Miss Bixby’s, hers are the best.” This man, skinny and whiskered, sighed dreamily, his horse’s reins held loose in his hands.

“Soon enough, my boy!” said a jolly fat man. “Feasting awaits, it does, it does, just need to bop this bugger off. It does seem a shame, doesn’t it, though—never seen such a snow-white buck like this ‘un. ’Tis a beauty.”

“Beauty or not, he’s gonna taste right gamey, I tell you,” grumbled another man between hiccups. “There’s not a sliver of fat on that— _hic_ —rangy beast.”

All twelve of the men fell chattering amongst themselves, or else swayed impatiently on their horses, which pawed the ground. All of them—except for the man who stood in the center of the ring. He sat stock-still on his horse, watching William. In the soft blue light of settling twilight, William could only barely make out the broad strokes of his face, which was clean-shaven and straight-nosed. His eyes were in shadows. As William watched those shadows, he imagined that the man was working out the best strokes with which to cut William down; and indeed, when the man swung his legs over his horse and dropped to the ground on heavy boots—all of the men suddenly went hush—, he withdrew his sword from the long scabbard tied to his saddle. The blade hissed like a snake giving warning of a coming strike.

“The baying, the baying—unmake him, my lord,” chanted the man who dreamed of Miss Bixby’s pies, while the barrel-shaped man huffed a “Finally!” and the rest of them began to murmur and hurrah.

As William watched the ring of men jostle their horses impatiently, he realized very suddenly that not one of them knew what it was to be afraid. Not one of them knew what it was like to run from a death that was snapping at your heels, gaining, gaining, gaining on you no matter how fast you ran or how fast your heart beat. They would kill him tonight under the full moon while making uncouth jokes, and they would feed all of his unwanted scraps to their slavering dogs; and when they returned home to their feast of beer, bread and venison, they would sing jolly songs of triumph without once comprehending the depth and purpose of the ritual.

All at once, every drop of William’s fear sublimated into incandescent fury. These men had done nothing to earn his sacrifice. If he must die tonight—and so he must, if the old willow was to be believed—, then he would make them earn his death. He would make them understand what it was to be _afraid_.

As the man with the sword strode toward William, his eyes unwavering in their focus, William saw him open his mouth to say something—a blessing? a curse? an idle comment?—but William did not wait to hear the words before he struck. 

William was lightning; William was fury; William was venom: William was no longer a stag, but a great white serpent who lashed out at the line of men in one quick strike. In an instant, their chortles scuffed into gasps and shrieks as their steeds were swept out from under them. There were whinnies as horses fell and cracks as bones broke, and then arose a cacophony of panicked bodies. 

It was not enough.

William had spent long enough kneeling at his mother’s loom to have seen all of the dreams that flashed through men’s minds: He knew their nightmares. For these men, he put his knowledge to good use.

A swarm of maggots burst out of the belly of one man’s lamed horse; another horse transformed into a wildcat with flashing red eyes and hissing yellow teeth; a rotting corpse grasped at the ankles of another; and all the men scattered into the forest, some on two legs, others stumbling on crushed knees or broken ankles, all of them screaming.

All of the men—except one.

He’d dropped his sword under the sweep of the serpent, but the Lord of the Hunt had not run away. Instead, the Man strode toward the maggots, the wildcat, the corpse, his footsteps unfaltering even though his eyes (William could see now) glittered with something that might have been fear or horror or sadness; he strode up to William, who was now a rabid, snapping wolf, and in one smooth lunge, he clasped William between his arms, unheeding of the scrape of canines and slash of claws.

“Calm now, calm now,” the Man gasped as William struggled wildly against him. His arms were like vices squeezing William tight no matter how he moved, no matter what shape he shifted into: a slippery sturgeon gave him no escape, nor did a silky eel; the weight of a bear caused the Man to stagger but not to loose his grip; the quills of a porcupine only made the Man set his jaw and clench his teeth.

On and on, William flickered through the shapes of any animal that he could think of—raven, ram, gorilla, sphinx—; but still the Man did not let him go. Instead, he only murmured a steady chant of “ _Calm yourself, calm, calm_ ,” until William, who was already exhausted by the Moving and the Chase of the day-long Hunt, could barely force the air back out of his lungs when he gasped each breath.

Finally, William fell limp in the Man’s grip, without power even to keep his eyes open. He dropped his head to the Man’s shoulder and felt his body melt back into his own gangly shape, the welcome relief of fingers and toes and sweat pouring down his hot neck.

The world went quiet, only the rush and ripple of the river nearby and the susurrations of the wind through the trees’ dry leaves. William sucked in deep breaths, and the seizing burn in his lungs began to relax. The sweat that streamed down his back began to cool. If he hadn’t been held against the furnace of the Man’s body, he would have begun to shiver.

The Man slowly crouched down into a kneel, never once relaxing his grip on William. William found himself stupidly, madly grateful for the embrace. There was something gentle in it, and perhaps it was only caution that softened the Man’s movements, the visceral knowledge that William could still lash out at him like a viper, but even if he was afraid, the Man was still murmuring an absent-minded litany of soothing words, like you do to an anxious horse, and William found that it worked like a lullaby on him, too. If William was a viper, then this Man was a snake-charmer; every word was a warm chant on his neck. William sighed and did not open his eyes. He let himself be held. If this was how he was to die, then perhaps it would not be so bad.

In the peace of the night, William came back into himself, a slow gathering of his control once more. As he did so, he realized that the clothes of the Man who held him were torn and bloody. He hadn’t escaped William’s claws and fangs unharmed; but still he held William without punishment or anger, only a soothing steadiness.

William swallowed through a gummy throat and wondered if he had it in him to apologize to this man. _I shouldn’t need to_ , a furious corner of his mind hissed; _after all, he was hunting me_ —but somehow the anger didn’t catch hold of William; he had burnt all of it out of this system during his attack on the men.

Slowly, tentatively, he moved to sit back on his haunches, bracing his palms on the Man’s broad back. The Man’s arms allowed him the movement, though they did not drop out of their wary lock.

“Are you—“ the Man began to say, but then William looked up at him and his words cut off.

They stared at each other, and the full moon froze in the sky to the West. The Man’s face was a work of clean geometry, the kind of smooth, youthful face found only on the ancient statues of Rome, where they’d been chiseled by daydreaming artisans. It was the kind of face that William saw often in his mother’s magic mirror, in the sultry fantasies of men and women the world over. When William had been a changeling child in the cleric’s house, he himself had dreamt of this man, of his straight nose and plump lips and sky-blue eyes; he’d dreamt of his guileless smile and gentle hands. But then he’d grown older and convinced himself that men like this—men who did not flinch at monsters but instead embraced them—only existed in daydreams and fantasies.

_Alright_ , William thought to himself and closed his eyes, _to him I can give this_. He tilted his head up to the moon, baring his throat, and said, “So do it.”

“Pardon?” the Man said. His voice was lovely as honey, even when his tongue hesitated on confusion.

“Finish your job,” William said, but still the Man did not move, only stared at William’s face as if his eyes were riveted there. William felt the heat of their focus even though his own eyes were closed. Finally, after a long moment, William huffed out an annoyed breath and moved: He reached for one of the Man’s hands and guided it to the dagger that hung on his belt. He closed the Man’s fingers around the hilt and brought the heavy weight of it up to his neck, so that the edge of the blade pressed against his throat in a line parallel to that of the torc collar. “Kill me,” he instructed.

The Man jerked away, shaking William’s hand off. “I will _not_ ,” he said, and when William reached again for his arm, to pull the dagger back to his throat, the Man threw the weapon away and gripped William’s wrist instead. “Why would you ask that of me?” he demanded. When William moved to slap him, he easily caught William’s other wrist.

“You had no problem with arbitrating my death when I was a stag,” William snapped, glaring.

“Because I thought you were a stag! I will not hunt a fellow man—“

“I’m not a man, I’m one of the Fay, you complete clod—I was the serpent that hit you and the wolf that bit you and the bear that scratched you, or did you forget? There is magic afoot tonight, and you’re part of it just as much as I am, and we both have our roles to play.” He rattled angrily against the Man’s grip, but his hands were like vices, unyielding and steadfast. “You are the hunter and I am the prey, and so you must kill me.”

“Or else what?” the Man demanded, brows pulled together. “Is this a Fairy game? To trick men into cruelty and evil? I want no part of it.”

“So it’s cruel to kill men but kindness to hunt animals, to hunt them until fear burns through their lungs and rips through their veins? What a self-centered double-standard!”

“It’s not kindness; hunting cannot be about kindness.” The Man paused. “But … it can be—should be—about necessity. About ceremony. About ritual.”

“Ritual.” That awful word. “You know why _this_ venery hunt is a ritual?” William demanded, voice still hot with annoyance as he jerked his arms out of the Man’s grip. When the Man did not reply, only watched William with flushed cheeks, William told him, “Every year on the Hunter’s Moon, you men ride out on your horses with your hounds at your heels, and you chase down the silver fox, or the white stag, or—or the golden boar, whatever it is, and you catch the animal and eat it in a grand feast; and what you don’t know, or else what you’ve all forgotten, is that every year, one of the Fay is given the duty—“ William tugged angrily at his torc collar. “—of taking the shape of the silver fox or the white stag or the golden boar, and of dying at the hands of men.”

“For what purpose?” the Man asked, frowning skeptically at William.

“Because—“ William paused. For what purpose indeed? He himself had denied his grandfather’s answers to this exact question. For what purpose?

At William’s hesitation, the man sat back on his heels. “You don’t know yourself.” It wasn’t an accusation, but the truth of the words was still humiliating.

William shut his eyes and drummed the fingers of one hand on his thigh. For what purpose? Was this night without purpose for him? Would he wake up tomorrow unchanged, as if nothing had happened, with the tight coil of fear still sitting in his breast, waiting to seize his heart at a moment’s notice? 

“Because it is necessary for us to peer into the shadows,” he said slowly. “Because it is necessary to know what lives there, because we live in this world, too, and we ourselves are sometimes part of its shadows.” He opened his eyes and looked up, gazing fiercely into the Man’s eyes. “The Fairy often make sport of men on dark nights. It is only fair for men to make sport of us as well. There must be reciprocity for there to be balance.”

“That,” the Man said tiredly, warily, “only creates balance if all of the parties involved are aware of the terms of balance.”

“The Fairy remember,” William snapped. “It’s men who have forgotten their end of the bargain.”

“Maybe so,” replied the Man with no heat. He squinted up at the night sky and shrugged his wide shoulders, as if he were trying to shrug away a pesky thought. Suddenly, he looked very young; William wondered how old this lordling was. “But I want no part of it, not here, not tonight with you. I will not kill you.”

“But you must.”

“I _refuse_ ,” the Man (the Boy?) said, setting his jaw.

“It’s not—“ William didn’t how to explain the magic of it to a human, and perhaps he shouldn’t even try; perhaps an explanation would destroy the power of the magic, because magic could only exist in the mystery between words and reality. But he owed an explanation, if not an apology, to this man, and so he tried to explain it. “It would not be … a permanent death. I would wake up from it tomorrow.”

“What? How can that be?”

“Magic,” said William, raising an eyebrow. Let some mystery remain. “I would not die.”

“But I would still have killed you.”

William tilted his head. Well, yes. That was the point.

“No,” the Man said, shaking his head. There was something final in his voice, something stubborn and unwavering. “I will not, I will not do it.”

William gritted his teeth, biting down on a hiss of frustration. William began this night dreading his fate, and now that he had understood its Purpose and had learned to welcome its inevitability, this man refused to hand it to him. 

“Coward!” he spat out at him.

The accusation fell off of the Man’s broad chest like a child’s tossed pebble. He only looked at William with steady eyes, which knew a perfect confidence that was not arrogance but wisdom. He said calmly, quietly, “I know what I am, and I am not a coward.”

William pressed his palms against his eyes—one of those old human gestures that he couldn’t defeat, no matter how long he lived amongst the Fairies of his grandfather’s Court—and pressed his lips shut tight against a hysterical giggle that bubbled up his throat. What do you expect from a man as noble and beautiful as a figment of your dreams?

What was William supposed to do? He still wore the torc, heavy around his neck; he still remembered the onus that his grandfather had handed him. How could he renege on his duty, knowing what he now knew—knowing that Thomas had never gone back on his word, but had offered himself innumerable times to the morbid fate demanded of him by their grandfather—by the laws of Magic itself? If William shrugged the duty off of his shoulders and dropped it into the dirt, then he would be the coward. This man might not be able to live with himself if he killed William, but William could not live with himself if he did not die.

He dropped his hands from his face and stood up on legs still shaky from exhaustion. “Alright,” he said, while the Man watched him with wary confusion, but William did not glance at him; he was staring deep into the black shadows of the forest, where his fate awaited him, watching him back. “Alright,” he repeated, and stepped toward the trees, every muscle of his body aching. All that William wanted was to curl into his bed and fall asleep, but he knew that he could not; and the lack of choice made his task easier, dulled the lances of pain that shot through his calves with every step. It would hurt, but he would become a stag once more because he had no choice, and he would find some foolish man to butcher him because he had no choice.

“What are you doing?” asked the Man, getting to his feet and following William, a looming, nervous presence at his shoulder.

William ignored him and kept walking. The men of the hunting party must surely still be limping through the forest, and perhaps one of them would welcome an opportunity to exact his revenge. Despite everything, he could still return home as a victor—a wounded victor, true, but triumphant at the last, and full of harrowing tales of monsters.

“You cannot,” said the Man, reading William’s intentions in the set of his shoulders. He reached out to grip William’s elbow, and—damn him—his strength was such that William was forced to a halt. “I will not let you.”

William shot a poisonous glare at him, his anger made sharp by despair, because god, god, in another place, in another time, he would have loved this man: He was noble and good in a way that William had been searching for in the hearts of men throughout his entire life; like something that existed only in his mother’s tapestries, something distilled and purified from reality, something incorruptible and timeless.

But William had a duty tonight, and he hissed as he slipped out of his skin into that of a stag—or tried to, at least, but the Man yelled, “ _No_!” and lunged forward to grip him once more between his arms.

“You will _not_!” yelled William, struggling furiously against the Man’s hold. He thought of eagles and mice and snakes and all those creatures whose greatest talent was speed and flight, but though his skin rippled through textures, fur and feather and scale sprouting across him in wild undulations of color, he couldn’t sink into any one animal’s shape. He was too exhausted.

“Let me _go_ , damn you!” he cried in growing panic, but the Man did not let go.

“I refuse!” the Man yelled back and gripped him more tightly, even as William bit and clawed at his arms, frantic as a feral cat.

It was a losing battle, and William did not greet the loss gracefully, too exhausted and angry for grace. His breath began to hitch as he wilted in the Man’s grip. Eventually, when he could not persuade even one nail to transform into a claw, he dropped limp, sobbing.

“Coward—coward—coward,” he gasped out between sobs, furious at both himself and the man who held him in a vice grip; but the Man did not let go, nor did he say anything in reply. He only held William against his chest and sighed, his breath hot in William’s hair.

William barely heard the noise over the pounding of his own blood in his ears, and anything else that he heard after his heart had begun to calm down he thought to be part of a dream; sleep had seized him against his will. He fell unconscious before the hot tears on his cheeks had time to cool.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

William did not die. The world did not wobble, tilting dangerously off-balance. When William woke up, he saw chickadees in the branches overhead, singing their devotions to Autumn as if there were no evil in the world, only the sunlight that dappled them through the latticework of leaves. He blinked up at the birds in shock, wondering if this was the truth: The ancient rituals could be ignored without the world taking notice of their absence. Maybe they existed solely for the Fay, to ensure their survival and theirs alone; but the world could gladly exist without them.

And yet the torc collar would not come off. William fingered it absent-mindedly as he watched the chickadees flit overhead, his hand automatically drawn to the only adornment on his nude body. When the birds left—all at once, as if they’d been called away or, perhaps, frightened away by something—, he tugged at it with a clenched fist, but it would not give, only clasped itself more tightly around his throat.

William did not cry or moan; all fight had left him, leaving only a glassy pool of exhaustion in its wake. He stared up into the golden beech leaves hanging overhead and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now. God, he’d bungled the whole ritual up, and for what? How could he ever look his grandfather in the eye again?

He shivered. An easier question to start with: Where was he? He could no longer hear the rushing course of the river nearby. _When_ was he? How long had he been asleep?

The Man rumbled a sleepy sigh, and William felt the vibrations of it shiver across his back. Even after William had fallen limp in his hold, the Man had not been willing to let him go. He must have carried William away from the river into the shelter of the forest and then settled them both down for sleep on a bed of leaves, he acting as William’s blanket, pressed against his back and wrapped around him. It was as charming a gesture as it was infuriating.

William made to get up, but at the movement, the Man’s arms tightened around him, holding him closer. The collar around his neck, the arms around his chest: William was thoroughly trapped, and, besides, his body still ached from yesterday’s strain. He wouldn’t have been able to slip through the Veil and return to his grandfather’s Court even if he’d wanted to.

He took a deep breath and let it whistle slowly out through his nose. The sunlight drifted down through the branches of the trees, settling over the duff and brush like golden honey, unusually warm for the first day of November. Nothing could disturb its quiet; anything that tried would find itself stymied by the viscosity of the air, which would not allow any quickness, only slow and unhurried sways. Even the noises of the insects, invigorated by this late-season reprieve, sounded as if they came from somewhere very far away.

He heard a sudden inhale of breath behind him.

“What’s your name?” William asked, his tongue moving before his mind could catch up to it. Then he closed his eyes and wondered if this was what love, or fearlessness, felt like: a lack of control.

“Theodore,” the Man replied, voice sandy with sleep, and William wanted to slap him because the idiot was telling the truth, William could _feel_ it, and who in god’s name was stupid enough to give their real name to a Fairy? You should never, ever trust your true name to a Fairy; they would sink their teeth into it and refuse to let go.

“Theodore,” William repeated, tasting the sound of it on his tongue. It was smoky and spicy-sweet. “Were you a gift from God, Theodore?” he asked idly, remembering his Latin.

“All of us are, aren’t we,” Theodore replied, shifting away from William in order to stretch his arms and yawn. He paid no heed to William’s snort and rolled eyes. He sat up and looked down at William, a study that began curious and concerned, but, as his eyes roved, slipped into something warmer. When William turned to look at him, Theodore quickly glanced away. “And you,” Theodore said, then swallowed, cleared his throat, and began again, “what’s your name?’

“I’m not telling you,” William said, pushing up out of the blanket of beech leaves. Theodore’s eyes snapped back to him. “I’m not stupid enough to give my name to a stranger,” William told him, carefully enunciating each syllable.

Theodore rolled his eyes skyward and pressed his back into the smooth gray bark of the beech tree that had sheltered them both through the night. “True, you _are_ strange,” he agreed, “but I don’t think you can call yourself a stranger to me any more.”

“I’ll call myself whatever I want to,” William replied hotly, the tips of his ears going red.

“I know how you move when you’re afraid, I know what you look like when you’re angry, I know the weight of your body when you’re sleeping—,” Theodore told him.

“Congratulations to you—“ snapped William, the angry flush spreading to his cheekbones.

“—I know that you have a peculiar fixation on dying—“

“You—“ William glared at Theodore. “—don’t know _anything_.”

“—and I know that I cannot let you die.”

William’s glare froze and became brittle. He looked at Theodore, who looked back at him with unwavering eyes the color of a spring day when the earth was just beginning to wake up after a long, cold sleep. His glare cracking, William shook his head and asked, “And why is that? Chivalry? _Noblesse oblige_?”

“No.” Theodore did not blink or look away. “Because,” he said slowly, “I don’t think you actually want to die. I think you’ve just forgotten what you want to live for.” The words were spoken quietly, but they sounded loud in William’s ears. “And,” Theodore added, “maybe I’m selfish, but I don’t want you to die, not by my hand or by anyone else’s.”

A hush. In the daylight, Theodore’s hair framed his face like a crown of spun gold, and his skin, unblemished by pockmarks or pimples, reflected the warm light of the noon sun, refracting it so that it looked as if it emanated from within his own body. Boyish freckles dusted his nose and, William could see through the tears in his tunic, speckled his collarbone and forearms. His shoulders were broad and powerful; they had not once bowed under the pressures that William had put on them last night, no matter how heavy; nor had his heart beat anything worse than steady and strong, even in the face of monsters. Even William’s grandfather, the great Shaper of Mountains, would strain to push Theodore when Theodore did not wish to be pushed; but Theodore would allow the shove with an easy smile and laugh, if he knew that it would help someone, because Theodore, deep in his bone and down to his last drop of blood, was good.

These things William knew without a shadow of a doubt; they were woven into every vowel and consonant of the man’s name.

Suddenly, William felt like he could cry. He blinked and looked away.

“You don’t know me,” he told Theodore, but the words held no heat; they sounded tired even to William’s ears.

Theodore said nothing, only continued to watch him, and William had to get away from him, had to put distance between him and those knowing eyes, so he stood up and paced away. The insects had gone quiet while they were talking, pausing to catch their breaths between songs, and all that William heard was the occasional shiver of a nearby tree and the random calls of curious robins.

William plucked half-heartedly at his collar, then looked down to study the back of his hands. His skin was the color of dusty clay, a color that had once, when he was a child, caused him trouble when the bishop decided that it must indicate William’s moorish parentage. This, in spite of the protestations of his own mother and father (or rather, the woman and man who believed themselves to be his mother and father), who swore him as their own flesh and blood upon the wrath of God. When William had finally run away from the town with the half-built cathedral, he had looked back only for his parents. Even to this day, he found himself missing them sometimes, when the Fairies of the Court fell into particularly sharp and vicious moods. When he’d been a child growing up amongst humans, he’d always known that however cruel the strangers of the world were to him, he had only to step across his parents’ threshold and he would find a warm fire and wide embrace waiting for him inside. His father had always ruffled his hair, even when William was taller than he was, and his mother had always rubbed at his cheeks, as if she still saw the bruises and blushes that had once bloomed there.

But his parents—his first parents, who may not have been his by blood but who were by all other measures—were long dead, and the cathedral that he had known as a half-built catastrophe now loomed tall and grand over the town he’d grown up in. Time passed, and humans appeared and vanished like flickering images, all while William remained static. His skin was still the color of dusty clay, and he still blushed when he was angry.

It was a peculiar kind of doom, to fall in love with a human. For proof, William had only to look at his mother—his second mother, the Fairy lady who had given birth to him but who had only come to know him after he had approached adulthood. She spent her days sitting at her loom, staring into a mirror that never showed her the only thing that she wanted to see, because the mirror could not pry into the lands of the dead.

Maybe William was doomed no matter what course of action he chose.

If that were so, then what did it matter if he chased the things that he wanted instead of denying them?

He looked back toward Theodore. The man’s watchful eyes had not once left William. Even though he would, William knew, let William leave if he chose to walk away, the man would only do so reluctantly; this, William read in the taut line of his shoulders and the anxious tilt of his eyebrows. William wondered if Theodore was aware that he was clenching and unclenching his fist where it was propped casually over his knee.

With every flex of movement, scabbed cuts on Theodore’s knuckles reopened, gleaming a vivid red. They looked like wounds from the claws and teeth of some feral animal. William stared at them, and at the rips and punctures in Theodore’s clothes. His face grew hot with shame.

Before he could think better of it, William strode back to Theodore’s side and knelt down close to him, close enough to lean over his knees and grasp his hand.

“What—?” said Theodore, giving a start, but he held himself still, as if he thought that movement would make William spook. He let William turn his hand over for study without comment; he let William run his fingers over the scratches and puncture wounds without flinching.

At some point during the night—it must have been after William fell unconscious and Theodore carried him to the beech tree—Theodore had rinsed and dressed his wounds. William could smell the salve now: comfrey and plantain in rare, imported olive oil, a comforting green smell that reminded William suddenly of sitting on his first mother’s bed and watching while she sighed and dressed his wounds, mysterious things that William had never once explained to her; but he hadn’t needed to because he knew that she knew where they’d come from. Sometimes, when he’d wished hard enough, the wounds had healed before he came home.

Theodore’s wounds were unexpectedly shallow, at least as far as William could see—but they still bled freely. They must have hurt; they must still sting.

It was William who had done this to Theodore. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was William who must fix this for Theodore.

He brought Theodore’s hand up to his lips and only then, finally, looked up to meet Theodore’s questioning gaze. He tried to tell Theodore, _Don’t move, please_ , but he wasn’t sure that the man understood the request because Theodore only continued to stare at him with his head cocked slightly to one side.

William looked back down. No room for hesitation or second guessing. He opened his mouth and began to lick over every cut that crosshatched the back of Theodore’s hand. He felt Theodore stiffen, a breath punched out of his lungs, but the man stayed obediently still while William worked his magic.

A few moments later, William straightened to study his handy-work: Where there had been split flesh, there was now only smooth, freckled skin. Not a single scar remained, at least nothing from William’s attacks. A few old white marks laced Theodore’s fingers and knuckles, wounds from youthful sword training, perhaps, or else knightly jousts at tourneys. William rubbed curious fingers over them, wondering what their stories were. What—or who—, he wondered, had Theodore fought for when he’d held his lance and spear?

The wounds that William had given him last night were not confined only to Theodore’s hands. They snuck under his sleeves and crept up his arms and, if the rips in his tunic were anything to go by, they fanned out across his chest and belly.

William hummed as he pushed up the sleeve of Theodore’s tunic. A parallel series of three long gashes: gone in a moment. A spattering of puncture wounds on the tender underside of his forearm: easily licked away. A scrape of skin missing from his elbow: healed without a moment’s hesitation.

But the sleeve of the fine silk tunic—a rich ebony cloth with sprigged brocade of gold—could be pushed no further; it bunched, tight around Theodore’s bicep, and refused to move. William hesitated.

—No, no room for hesitation or second-guessing. He placed a palm on the ground and carefully levered himself until he came to a kneel between Theodore’s thighs, one of which was still bent up, the other splayed out in an insouciant lounge. Theodore watched him move, but William did not glance at him; his only focus, he told himself, was on healing the wounds, on fixing the mistakes he’d inflicted on Theodore.

Still, no matter what he claimed, he could not help but blush when he reached for the belt that girdled Theodore’s tunic and cotton undershirt. He glanced up once, to make sure that his touch would not be received as an invasion. When he met Theodore’s eyes, he thought, _Oh, this was a mistake._ This close, he could see every nuance of color in Theodore’s eyes— _good god, they were blue_ —and he could feel Theodore’s steady, warm breaths on his cheeks.

Theodore only continued to watch him through half-lidded eyes, sitting perfectly still.

The buckle took a bit of work, but once it was loose, the belt slid away easily, jingling with its accoutrement of scabbards and rings. William curled his fingers under the hems of Theodore’s tunic and undershirt, then lifted them up over Theodore’s head, an action made easy when Theodore leaned forward and lifted his arms for William. William carefully folded the shirts and set them down nearby. 

Theodore had a broad chest, solid with the kind of muscle that William, skinny and narrow as he was, had never known. There was a smattering of gold hair that fanned across his pectorals, curled around his dusky nipples, then plunged down his belly, down under the hem of his breeches. William brought a quivering hand up to Theodore’s chest, splaying it over his solar plexus. Under the heat of his skin, William could feel the rhythmic drumbeat of Theodore’s heart and the steady bellows of his lungs as the man breathed slowly, steadily, deeply. William swallowed around a sudden lump in throat.

—He had a task to finish. Beyond the random cuts and gashes here and there, there were puncture wounds all across Theodore’s chest and belly— _the porcupine_ , William realized, _it was the porcupine that did the worst of the damage_ —and purple bruises had bloomed across his collarbones and shoulders. 

William let out a long, careful sigh, then leaned close to press a kiss to a bruise on Theodore’s shoulder.

There were other ways William could have done this. Fairies did not make it a habit of healing humans, but one of their greatest loves was the pursuit of refinement. As a people, they had spent no small effort in refining all magical practices into things of beauty, and the healing arts were no exception. Over the centuries and millennia, they had come up with all sorts of novel spells that could be used to set bones and soothe burns: spells that bloomed out of cuts like roses, spells that flowed over skin like syrup, spells that steamed over burns like boiling water. In general, William loved this flashy kind of magic. It was _beautiful_ , and it was the kind of spellcraft that resonated most readily with his body. Sometimes, however, there was no spell more efficient than the ancient way, and the ancient way that all animals knew instinctively was to lick a wound clean.

Theodore smelled like smoke, like butter, like cinnamon—like everything earthy and spicy and luscious. William’s mouth watered as he dragged his tongue in broad sweeps over the puncture wounds on Theodore’s chest, then mouthed at a line of scrapes that stretched around his bicep. He pressed his hands against Theodore’s sides and stroked his thumbs over his ribs, over the grooves of muscle there. 

There was something hypnotic about doing this kind of work, about falling into a rhythm and immersing yourself in a single task. William worked his way rightward, healing all wounds on Theodore’s left arm, then his chest (with a brief dip down to his belly), then finally across his right arm. When he breathed the final kiss onto a bruise on Theodore’s right wrist, he blinked drowsily as if waking up from a dream.

All at once, William realized how hot he was: There was sweat beading his forehead and upper lip, and his breath trembled in his lungs on every inhalation. He was tired, and his legs were sore from kneeling so long, and he was desperately, achingly hard.

And Theodore—

Theodore was still sitting stock-still, but at some point during William’s ministrations, he had pressed his head back against the beech tree. The tendons of his neck shown like tense ropes, his jaw clenched and his eyes squeezed shut. One hand gripped his propped knee while the other was braced on the ground. William glanced down: Theodore’s cock was a thick line straining at the laces of his breeches. William’s breath hitched.

If William could carry one memory to his grave, he thought that perhaps this would be it: This, the realization that he could make someone want him. It was the one thing he’d wished for his entire life. He stared at Theodore and, for the first time in centuries, felt a desire to pray.

There was still, he realized, a cut under Theodore’s jaw. With a trembling hand, he reached up to cradle the back of Theodore’s head. At his touch, Theodore’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and William heard him swallow, but Theodore did not move. William leaned in close, watching Theodore’s face all the while. He pressed a kiss gingerly, tenderly, against the bone of Theodore’s jaw, and he paused like that for a moment, breathing in Theodore’s spicy scent and tasting the warm salt of his skin.

“William,” he murmured, pressing the word into Theodore’s skin like a tattoo, “my name is William.”

And then he stood up and ran, because everything was too much and everything was not enough, and he deserved none of it but wanted all of it.

  
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

  
And he ran.

The stillness of the morning popped like a burst bubble, and all of the sounds of the forest suddenly rushed in: Nuthatches and flickers complained as they crept along the trunks of the trees, squirrels foraged through the leaves with crinkly carelessness, and the wind moaned through the high branches, working to shake loose the trees' every last leaf.

“No—!” he heard Theodore yelp behind him. The man launched himself after William with a speed that he did not expect, but the alarm of it only made William run faster, his feet nimble over the slippery forest floor. William was talented at running away; his legs were long and lithe from a lifetime of running away. He put those muscles to use now, just as he had yesterday during the Hunt.

William ran. He leapt over fallen logs and ducked under low-hanging branches; he burst through thickets of brambles and glided over tangles of matted vines. His muscles still ached from the Hunt yesterday, but somehow the pain was easier now than it had been last night. Before, it had been molten lead in his bones, dragging him down with punishing weight, but now it was only dust that needed to be blown off of the polish underneath.

William ran, and he ran, and he ran, until all that he remembered was the need to run; all that he felt was the burn of his lungs and the pound of his heart and the strain of his thighs. He forgot everything else, all desires, all fears. There was only him and the screech of alarmed bluejays as they flung themselves out of his way.

He was not fast enough. He heard a puff of breath close behind him, and then Theodore caught him around the waist. The movement was not graceful: Theodore had launched himself from one foot, and once he’d caught William, they spun off-balance until their centrifugal momentum was violently broken by an ancient giant of an oak tree. Theodore slammed into it back first, and William felt the force of it punch through his own body, then reverberate with the aftershocks of Theodore’s gasps. The oak tree shuddered, and a cascade of leaves and acorns rained down over them, like a sudden hail storm pounding the earth.

The storm quickly petered out. The forest went mute under the rasp of his and Theodore’s staccato breaths, which sounded loud as a crashing surf, as if they were each standing on the edge of two oceans.

Theodore slid down the trunk of the oak, pulling William down with him by an arm clasped around his waist. _Back where we started_ , William thought, a hysterical giggle bubbling up through his heaving chest; _I might as well not even have tried._

“Will you please—“ Teddy gasped between breaths, “—stop—running away!”

“Stop chasing me!” William retorted, but he was too tired now to fight; he could only drop back against Theodore’s chest and let his head loll against the man’s shoulder. He stretched out his legs, helpless to the pinging twitches of overworked muscles.

Overhead, in the high branches of the grand old oak tree, a squirrel chittered angrily at them, flicking its red tail as if it were waving a battle flag. William squinted up at it and bared his teeth, calling its bluff with a hiss of warning.

Suddenly, Theodore dropped his forehead to William’s shoulder, startling William’s attention back down out of the branches.

“I refuse,” Theodore murmured, curling his arms around William and hugging him tight to his body, as if he were trying to open the doors of his ribcage and fold William into his chest, somewhere where he could keep hold of William.

William closed his eyes and wondered, again, what the hell he was supposed to do now. He had tried all of his options, and Theodore had cut him off at every turn; any direction he looked, there was now only Theodore standing, waiting for him. But still William kept turning and turning in frantic search because—

Why?

Because he was still afraid, he realized. He was afraid of wanting too much, because the more that you wanted, the more that you had to lose, and the person who wanted the least was the person who had the most power in a situation: They could say, “No.” They could leave. 

His mother, the Lady of the Loom, was proof enough: She still wanted her long-dead lover, and so she was helpless against the torment of Time. William had once asked her, tentatively, quietly, if she wished that she had never met the mortal man who had become William and Thomas’s father. Her hands had gone still in the middle of their slide across the loom, and she’d stared, frozen, into her mirror. She was strikingly beautiful, his mother, but there was always something distant and untouchable about her beauty, as if it existed only in reflections.

“Perhaps it would have been kinder to all of us if we had not met,” she’d finally said, “but I would never choose to forget him. I hope—well.” She’d ducked her head below her veil, where William couldn’t see her eyes. “While I’m working, you see, sometimes … I remember a joke that he made or something ridiculous that he did, and it still makes me laugh, even after all this time.” She’d said nothing more, and the loom had begun to hum again.

At the time, William had not found this answer terribly compelling. All of that heartache for such meager returns?

He wondered what Thomas’s secret was. His brother ran through lovers—human, fairy, and fox alike—with shameless gusto, climbing out of one lover’s bed in order to chase after whatever wagging tail he spied around the corner. If William had long-since mastered the art of running away and hiding, then Thomas had long-since mastered the art of chasing after things—and maybe that was the answer right there. Their mother’s desires had been frozen in time, focused on a single, glimmering moment that had since passed away, and so she was now frozen, too, capable only of decaying, not growing; but the universe was made for growth and change, so if you yourself wanted to stay alive, you had to learn to keep moving forward. You had to keep pace with the march of Time, with all its heartaches and nightmares and surprises, with all of its loves and hopes and dreams.

If you wanted to fly, then you had to take the plunge; and if you hit rock bottom, then you had to pick your broken pieces back up and try again and again and again.

Theodore smelled like smoke and cinnamon, and he smelled like something that William had never tasted before. He smelled like desire. He smelled like change. _Jump, William. No room for hesitation or second-guessing. What you’re supposed to do now is stop running away; instead, chase after what you want with all that you’ve got_.

And oh, how William wanted Theodore, wanted this beautiful man who refused to let William run away.

He reached back to run a hand through Theodore’s hair. It was just as soft as he’d expected, the fine blond locks slipping through his fingers like strands of silk.

“If I promise to stop running away,” William murmured, frowning at the hollow taste of the words, “will you promise to stay with me?”

Theodore lifted his head off of William’s shoulder and looked down at William, who craned his neck to meet his gaze. William’s hand had slipped out of Theodore’s hair, down to his neck. “I have known you for one night, William,” Theodore told him (and _oh_ , the way that he said William’s name—), “and I already know that you will not stop running.” 

William curled his fingers in the fine hair at the nape of Theodore’s neck, bitter disappointment dropping through his belly like a block of ice. He leaned forward to leave, but Theodore refused to let his embrace be broken.

“But,” Theodore continued, “I also know that I would chase you to the ends of the earth if I had to, and I would keep chasing you beyond that, into the Heavens, if I could.”

The ice fizzed in hot water, a sudden thrum of heat that shot through William’s belly and crackled through his arms and legs, electric. “ _Why_?” William asked, and this time Theodore let him move. William turned around, kneeling over Theodore’s legs, and looked the man in the eyes. “You don’t know me.”

“Because you’re beautiful,” Theodore replied without hesitation. “Because I think—I know—that I could love you. Because I’m selfish—I want to be selfish—I want to want you, and chase you, and catch you.” He paused in sudden doubt. “If you’ll let me. If you want me.”

“Of course I want you and want you and want you,” William said. “You’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t—“ He cut off because suddenly they were kissing and William had no idea who began it, but that didn’t matter: They met each other as if pulled in by each other’s gravity, and after that, there was no going back.

This was the only thing that William could do now: He kissed Theodore with a desperation that shocked himself, his desire a fissure yawning open under his feet and consuming him whole. He wanted to know how every part of Theodore’s body tasted, smelled, and felt, and he wanted to know how all of the pieces fit together to form the perfect whole; he wanted to know what touches made Theodore gasp and which strokes made him shiver; he wanted to know how Theodore would touch him if William allowed him anything and everything.

He dragged his lips against Theodore’s, and Theodore followed, chasing his breath in order to catch the little gasp, the moment that William’s breath hitched when the man slid a hand down William’s naked back, down over the flow of bone and muscle, continuing over the curve of his rump and the line of his thigh, and then back the way it came in one long caress. Theodore’s hands were rough with calluses and hardened skin, and the feel of them made William’s breath catch. They were hands that could not be ignored; you felt every inch of them when they touched you, and they left a wave of tingling skin in their wake.

However rough his hands were, Theodore’s lips were tenderly soft, his nose was unbroken, and the previous night’s stubble was nothing more than downy on his chin. There was something young about Theodore, something that was easy to overlook or forget when Theodore stood up straight, squared his shoulders and set his jaw. As commanding a presence as Theodore was, William didn’t think that he could be much older than twenty-one, if that. Somehow the realization did not make William feel old; instead, he felt indescribably young. Maybe he was young, maybe he was still that boy who watched knights and princes from under his eyelashes, his cheeks hot; maybe the past century or two (or however long it had been) in the Fairy Court had been nothing but a dream from which he’d just woken up, and this, the weight of his body in the Kingdoms of Men, was not a burden but instead how he knew that he was real and that he was awake.

His entire body was awake: Everywhere Theodore touched lit up as if a torch had been lowered to a pile of kindling, and William’s skin was the kindling, was the bonfire; and Theodore touched _everywhere_. His strokes dragged up William’s sides then skimmed down across his soft belly, and curled around the arch of William’s hipbone in order to come to a momentary rest cupping the flesh of his ass, stroking his thumbs over William’s skin and encouraging the sway of their bodies, their hips moving together in an unconscious rhythm of desire. The tempo began sultry and lush while William pressed a line of kisses down Theodore’s neck and across his chest and Theodore panted hot breaths into William’s tangle of black hair, but then William scraped his teeth over his collar bone, and Theodore bucked, clasping William’s body close to his; and the tempo began to quicken, a heave and drop that matched their hitching breaths. Theodore’s fingers slipped down and pressed into the crease where thigh met ass, sending a shiver up William’s spine. 

William pressed a palm into the oak tree above Theodore’s head, bracing his body as he rode high, muscles taut, and watched the flicker of expressions across Theodore’s flushed face. When Theodore opened his eyes, he met William’s gaze, did not blink or look away when William pressed his other hand to Theodore’s chest, over his heart; and the moment hung between them, a question and an answer given silently to each other, a promise too precious to translate into words. The moment’s silence was not empty; it resonated between them with all of their desires, hopes and fears, echoing into each other like settling waves.

Theodore swallowed and brought a hand up to cup William’s cheek. William’s eyes fluttered closed as he leaned into the touch; and his lips, bitten red and plump, dropped open slightly when Theodore slid his hand into William’s hair, scrubbing his fingers across his scalp and through his wild tangles. With a sigh, William let his body drop down into Theodore’s lap, and he breathed deeply into the desire humming through his veins.

The bonfire had not cooled, but it had calmed into something more controlled and focused; it clarified into something with purpose. Theodore’s hand slid down further to cradle the base of his skull, and the movement pressed the torc collar into William’s neck. The silver metal was hot from both the heat of William’s body and that of the sunlight that beamed down through the trees; and it felt like a brand against his neck, writing Theodore’s claim into his skin. _I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours. You make me burn. I want you._

“Alright?” asked Theodore softly, stroking his fingers against the nape of William’s neck.

William leaned forward and pressed his lips to Theodore’s. He breathed his answer into the kiss, and Theodore gripped his hips, not in an attempt to hold William still but as if seeking an anchor while lost at sea. Perhaps Theodore had been just as lost as William; perhaps Theodore, too, had forgotten what he wanted to live for and he’d found his answer in William, exactly as William had found his in Theodore. There would be time, later, for William to ask; he knew that there would be time because he would make the time, even if he had to fight with tooth and nail against the disdain of his family, against the rules of Magic, against the march of Time.

Pressing their foreheads together, William brought his fingers slipping down the line of Theodore’s sternum, down the groove of his abs, and came to a rest at the laces of Theodore’s breeches. As he untied the knots, he felt Theodore’s fingers twitch on his hips; he heard the hitch in his breath. He didn’t realize that he was holding his own breath until it came out all at once, gasped out of his lungs, when the laces came undone and he tugged the breeches down.

It wasn’t as if William was naive and sheltered; he had watched his mother’s mirror long enough (had snuck into her tower, sometimes, late at night after she had gone to bed, in order to kneel before it) to have learned not just the circumference of mortal dread but the deep fathoms of human desire as well. He had seen cocks before, and he had seen sodomy between the bed sheets, but none of them had been for him, none of them were anything more than daydreams.

Theodore was here, and he was real, and his cock was flushed red, was hot and hard against William’s fingers. The sudden rush of desire hit William like the crash of an ocean wave; he wedged his face into the crook of Theodore’s neck and whimpered once, shuddering with the need to do _something_ but momentarily too overwhelmed to move.

With a shaky laugh, Theodore curled an arm around William’s back and pressed a kiss to his ear; and then he gripped both his cock and William’s in his hand. He squeezed them hard. William yelped, his whole body spasming, and Theodore’s shoulders went taut, but he did not let go. He twisted his wrist cleverly and stroked once and stroked twice—would have stroked thrice, but William reached down to grip his wrist, halting the motion.

“Your salve,” he gasped against Theodore’s neck, “the oil you used to dress your wounds. Where is it?”

Theodore breathed out one long breath, steady until it wavered ever so slightly on the last note. “It was—“ He swallowed thickly. “—on my belt. In a pouch.” —The belt which had been dropped under the beech tree before William fled, before the long chase through the woods.

But William was not the son of a Fairy Lady for naught. Without lifting his head from Theodore’s shoulder, he snatched at the air, and when his hand pulled back, he held Theodore’s belt, which was still weighted by the scabbards of two daggers, three brass rings, and a leather pouch.

“— _Oh_ ,” breathed Theodore, staring at the belt. “How handy.” Then he stroked their cocks again once, hard, and William dropped the belt, gasping and scrambling to grip Theodore’s biceps.

William glared at him, a flush mottling his cheekbones, but Theodore only greeted the look with a cheeky grin. He let go of them to pluck at the belt, and a moment later, he held up a small glass vial, which glinted in the afternoon sunlight, glowing with a blue light the shade of which William had only ever seen in the baubles and lamps that adorned the Fairy Courts. In the Kingdoms of Men, blue glass from Venice was a rare luxury anywhere north of the Alps, but William was unsurprised to find it here in Theodore’s possession. He wondered if Theodore had always been a prince, in demeanor as well as name, or if he’d had to learn the former while he grew into the latter.

The vial cast fractals of blue light across Theodore’s arm and William’s face. At the sight of it, Theodore’s grin faded into something stunned; and William’s throat went dry; and Theodore stared, a blush spreading across his face; and William felt a finger of heat trickle down the back of his neck; and Theodore swallowed; and William brought shaking fingers up to the vial.

Nervous or not, he knew exactly what he wanted to use the oil for.

Once this gift was given, it could not be taken back. The importance of virginity might fade with time, and maybe someday William would be able to mimic Thomas’s nonchalance about sex, shrugging off encounters as nothing more than amusing games; but right here, right now, this felt like the most important thing in the world, like the universe might indeed tilt off its axis after William gave this to Theodore, after Theodore returned the gift in kind. Nothing would be the same afterwards.

William leaned forward to kiss Theodore on the nose. “Thank you,” he whispered.

If Theodore had shrugged off his gratitude, or laughed in the face of it, William might have had to slap him; but he did neither of those things. Instead, Theodore ran his hands up William’s back and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. “You too,” said Theodore, smiling.

William had watched the idle daydreams of men, and he knew how to ply the human body, but there was a vast difference between having seen a thing and doing it himself. When he uncorked the vial and spilled some of the oil, his hands shook. When he reached back and worked himself open, he shuddered and jerked, no grace or rhythm to his movements, and when Theodore unexpectedly slid down the tree trunk, he took William with him, so that they both lay sprawled among the ancient roots, William on top of Theodore’s chest. When Theodore took the vial and oiled his own hands, William did not protest; did not protest when Theodore, breathless, pressed fingers into him and twisted his wrist in a counterpoint rhythm to the jerks of his hips. William reached between their bodies and stroked Theodore, who gasped out increasingly ragged breaths until he suddenly pulled his fingers out of William. He gripped William’s wrist, halting him as William had halted him before.

“We must—“ he tried to say, but the words caught and he had to swallow and try again. “I will—finish too quickly. If you—do that. Please—“

William cut him off with a kiss, licking into his mouth until Theodore bit his lip. “Yes,” breathed William, and what he meant was _Yes to everything, yes to all that you are and all that you want. Yes, please let me give my everything to you._

And when he braced his hands on Theodore’s chest and worked himself down onto his cock, his body was thrumming, humming _Yes_ to Theodore’s shuddering _Please_. And William—

William felt like he was dying, but the pain of it was ecstasy and the pleasure of it was heaven. If he died, he would not mind; he would count himself blessed. He bent his head like a pilgrim arriving at Mecca, and made his body into a chant, lifting his hips and driving them down onto Theodore, who received the prayer with stunned gasps and a matching upward thrust of hips. Each time they met each other, the force shook through both of their bodies like an earthquake reaching from their toes to their teeth, destroying the world in flashes of white light.

Closer and closer and closer: William felt the final shake approaching. He reached with his hands for Theodore’s, prying them off of his hips so that he could lace their fingers and grip their palms tightly together. Then Theodore snapped his hips up again and William gasped; and he shook apart while the world around him seemed, for a moment, to forsake gravity, and the only thing that kept him upright was Theodore’s tight grip—Theodore, who held onto William as his own lifeline when the squeeze of William’s body brought the crest of ecstasy crashing into Theodore’s own body.

William stared down at Theodore, stunned into stillness. All that he could hear was a buzzing static like a slowly receding surf. A drop of sweat trickled down his spine; another dropped, finally, from the tip of his nose. It fell onto Theodore’s chest, which was slick with the man’s own sweat.

The torc collar slipped.

William did not notice it as he leaned down to kiss Theodore. He breathed in the scent of cinnamon and desire, Theodore’s breath fanning across his lips, warm with promise; and he marveled at the fact that the weight of his body felt like a comfort. It was, after all, the weight of his body that pressed him close to Theodore’s; it anchored him to Theodore, and god, William wanted the anchor, wanted the tether. If he ever lost track of himself gazing with his moon eyes at something far away, if his head ever floated up off his shoulders and into the clouds, then he would always know the way home, so long as Theodore anchored him.

William cupped Theodore’s face with his hands and studied him, trying to memorize every freckle, every eyelash, every flicker of emotion on the man’s face; he tried to tattoo Theodore—this moment—onto his heart. There was nothing that he could do about the relentless march of Time, which would bring death and transformation to all things sooner or later, but he could remember this moment in all of its glories and gifts. As long as he remembered this moment, then even if he lost his way alone through the maze of centuries, he would always be able to come back to himself. He would always be able to remember the way that Theodore said his name—“ _William, William, William_ ”—full of awe and love and hope. He wanted to be worthy of the way that Theodore said his name, now and forever.

“What do you see?” Theodore murmured curiously, dancing fingers across William’s back.

William hummed thoughtfully, thinking about eternity and love and fearlessness. But then suddenly everything heavy inside him went weightless, and it all rose up through him like bubbles in a champagne glass. He grinned, wide and boyish. “I’m not telling you,” he declared and laughed when Theodore huffed an exasperated, “Oy!”

After a moment, William ducked down to press his forehead to Theodore’s. “Theodore, Theodore, Theodore,” he chanted, and then sighed because there was too much that he wanted to say— _I want you, I love you, tell me everything you were and are and want to become, don’t ever stop chasing me, please, please, not until the end of time_ —and he didn’t know where to start, so he said, “Theodore,” again, and then again.

And Theodore pulled him close and replied, “William,” in a warm tone of voice that told William that he understood perfectly everything that he wanted to say. Theodore understood that, despite his best intentions, William had died last night and had woken up into something brighter because of him.

The torc collar slid off of William’s neck like a cord of hemp rope and then lay coiled on the ground amid the ancient roots and browning leaves. It glinted under the honey-gold sunlight of the warm November afternoon. The cold winds of Winter would come soon enough, but then there would bloom another spring and another summer, and the cycle would spin on.

For now, the world was sultry and gentle, its shadows made mild by light. For the first time in his life, William wanted to be nowhere except exactly where he found himself.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅


End file.
